Here’s Conan O’Brien And A Bunch Of Old Writers Talking About The Simpsons

Late night rockabilly hero Conan O’Brien has crafted a really interesting side project over the past year, transforming himself into a deep-thinking Charlie Rose-type with his black-walled online talk show, Serious Jibber-Jabber. Since debuting the program last year, the host has gotten involved in long chats with a whole bunch of interesting people including enigmatic rocker Jack White and famed statistician Nate Silver.

Last night, O’Brien got together with his former The Simpsons co-writers and fellow Harvard comedy alumni Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen and Jeff Martin for a seriously long (over 80 minutes!) chat about the hit show’s rocky origins (the last successful animated show at the time was apparently The Flintstones), the stinginess of Fox producers (“Too many pretzels!” in the writers’ room), and the secret to the show’s subsequent longevity (the young writers’ “goofy cartoon jokes” + James L. Brook’s desire to focus on family issues).

They also talk about the time that creator Matt Groening came up with a potential series finale idea where Homer reveals that he’s really Krusty and Marge reveals that she’s a rabbit. Unfortunately, they don’t go into further detail about the amount of drugs smoked in the writers’ room at the time.

Anyway, here’s the video and your morning procrastination time sorted.